Day 29 & 30

Wow, it's been a doozy of a weekend. Yesterday, the Hubs got up bright and early to go run the Halloween Half Marathon that he'd signed up for. 13.1 miles. Oh, yeah, did I mention the starting temperature of about 33 degrees? Flipping cold! I don't know how he did it. Yeah, I do. He's awesome like that. He was pretty bummed about walking a little bit of it (around the water breaks, which I was extremely grateful that they had! It meant he didn't have to carry water with him somehow.) but despite the walking, he finished in less than two hours!  I was pretty impressed considering it was his first half-marathon. On the other hand, today he's walking like he rode a horse for the first time instead of ran 13 miles. He is walking VERY slowly and gingerly. His poor legs are so sore. The first five miles of the race was ALL downhill! His calves were just about dead after that.

But my husband doesn't like to stop when he's JUST ABOUT dead. He decided to take the oldest three to the zoo when he was done!  If you know the Hogle Zoo in Utah, it's basically on a hill. There's not a ton of flat terrain, plus he was pushing a double stroller. I don't know how he did it. I stayed home. I had eggrolls to make for a party. I wish I'd taken pictures of them because they turned out pretty great. But unfortunately the camera was in the car, and I was not thinking that far ahead. I'll share the recipe at the end of this post. It's super yummy. My mom came and helped me make them and brought my sister out so that I could go to a Halloween party with the Hubs. My sister's awesome and babysits for us quite a bit. The kids may actually go to bed better when she's here than when I am. ;) Chubby Bubby went to sleep by 7:30 last night and he actually slept until 7:40 this morning!  It was a GREAT night for me!  And we had a blast at the Halloween party, too. It was a murder mystery party, so it was really interactive and made us think. I won a prize at the beginning for learning the most about the other guests (as themselves, not their characters), so that was fun as well. The kids have been having fun playing with the little Chinese puzzle ball today. It was great.

 (Image from http://futurenewman.blogspot.com/2010_11_01_archive.html)

Anyway, on to the recipe! I hope some of you get to enjoy it as well!  My brother-in-law was quite upset that I'd never made them for him before. (For the record, I had, just in a different wrap, so they looked different!)

2 lbs. ground pork, chicken or turkey (I used turkey because I can't eat pork and it was easier to find than chicken.)
1 lb. cole slaw (no sauce, just the cabbage, carrots...the bagged mix basically)
1 can mushrooms
1 tsp. ginger
2 Tbsp. soy sauce
1-2 Tbsp. sesame oil
1 pkg. egg roll wraps (or gyoza wraps)

1. Run the cole slaw through a food processor or shredder of some kind. You want it a little more fine than it already is. Run it through the bigger grater setting because it will clog up your smaller grater. You can do it without this if you don't have one, but it's not quite the same texture.
2. Next, you want your mushrooms fairly small. (If you want them at all. I don't so I leave them out). You can grate them on the same setting as your cole slaw.
3. Add the cole slaw and mushrooms to the ground meat. Add in the ginger, soy sauce and sesame oil and mix. I just use my hands and it works better than any spoon.                                                                        
4. Get yourself a bowl of warm water to dip your fingers in. It will basically activate the flour that's on the wraps and make a paste to keep the egg rolls closed. If you're making these as egg rolls, put your wraps so that they form a diagonal in front of you. Put a line of meat in the center of the wrap. Fold up the bottom corner. Next fold in the corners on the sides and roll the egg roll the rest of the way. Use the water to paste it closed, basically anywhere the roll touches itself. You don't want it sopping wet. Just dip your finger in and then touch the wrap and it'll work.  (If you chose gyoza wraps, you'll put a spoonful in the center of the circle, wet around in a semi-circle on the edge and fold it in half, pinching the edges together. It looks like a chinese dumpling. In Japanese, it's gyoza.)
5. Heat up some oil. We used an entire bottle of oil for ours, although that obviously doesn't all soak into your egg rolls. Put egg rolls in the oil, making sure that they don't overlap. You should have a layer of egg rolls floating in oil. Your heat should be up to about high. The hotter the oil is when you drop your egg rolls in, the less oil actually soaks in to the egg roll. Cook both sides until they're a golden brown. When they reach a dark golden brown, they should be cooked through. We did put them in the microwave afterwards for about 30 seconds to make sure that the meat was done thoroughly. Continue to do this until all of your egg rolls are done. (This all goes for the gyoza as well, it'll just go more quickly.)

Now you have the option of eating them with plain soy sauce or our yummy sauce that we eat on gyoza.  It's one part soy sauce, to one part red wine vinegar. Whisk in a squirt of mustard. Then, if you like a little heat (which I DO!) put in a squirt of chili oil. It's super yummy and you can make it in whatever quantities you need using the one to one ratio. I honestly just dip my finger in when I'm done and taste it to decide if I want more mustard or chili oil. Then just dip your egg rolls in and enjoy!

Later today, I'll be making a new roll recipe, so I'll let you know how that turns out! Supposedly it only takes 30 minutes start to finish, so I'm crossing my fingers that it works well!